ECJ sides with France against MEPs on Strasbourg plenaries

Supporters of Strasbourg’s status as one of the two seats of the European Parliament were given a strong legal boost today by a ruling by the European Court of Justice.

The Court decided that a European Parliament plan to reduce the number of trips to Strasbourg could not be considered to satisfy a legal requirement in the EU treaties about the number of plenary sessions that must be held each year in Strasbourg.

In October, the Parliament held two plenary sessions within a single week, reducing the amount of travel while, in its view, meeting the requirement that 12 plenary sessions be held in Strasbourg every year. Instead of a usual plenary session, which lasts from Monday until Thursday, the Parliament in October held one session on Monday and Tuesday and another on Thursday and Friday, with Wednesday free of activities. It planned to do the same in October 2013.

The Parliament’s scheduling was challenged at the court by France, supported by Luxembourg.

The ruling

In September, an advocate-general tasked by the Court with drafting a preliminary view said in a non-binding opinion that the calendar had been “artificially split into two in order to meet, no less artificially, the requirements of the Treaties”.

Today's ruling reached the same conclusion, in different wording.

It said that the “member states intended the seat of the Parliament (Strasbourg) to be the place where 12 periods of ordinary plenary part sessions must take place on a regular basis.” To be judged to be ‘regular’, a plenary session “must be equivalent to the other ordinary monthly part-sessions”.

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Reactions

The French government: “The French authorities welcome this judgment, through which the Court of Justice has upheld their arguments. As the Court pointed out, the [EU] treaties, which the European Parliament is obliged to respect, have established a seat in Strasbourg and envisage that 12 ordinary monthly sessions must be held there. France is strongly committed to compliance with this provision, which reflects the desire of the European builders to build a polycentric Europe.”

Véronique Mathieu, a French conservative MEP:

“[This is] a great victory that reinforces the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The artificial splitting of a plenary week was an inefficient subterfuge aimed at circumventing EU treaty rules. The headquarters of the European institutions are determined by the member states and the decision of the Court of Justice of the EU can no longer challenge Strasbourg as the seat of the European Parliament.”

Edward McMillan Scott, British Liberal MEP and co-founder of the ‘Single Seat’ campaign:

“There is now a compelling case for a change to the Treaty to remove this wasteful obligation imposed by EU governments. We urge governments to respond to MEPs’ recent overwhelming vote for a single seat as well as public demand. MEPs, who are facing elections in 2014, will now examine their new powers to initiate the treaty change.”

Alexander Alvaro, a German Liberal MEP and co-founder of the ‘Single Seat’ campaign:

“It is indefensible – especially in this economic climate – that governments waste some €180 million each year by forcing the European Parliament to meet for four days a month at its official ‘seat’ in Strasbourg and keep half its staff in Luxembourg, not to speak of the extra 19,000 tonnes of CO2.”

It also said that the holding of two plenary sessions in a week “objectively bring about a significant reduction in the time which the Parliament was able to devote to its debates and its deliberations”.

By shortening its plenary sessions, the Parliament was not meeting its democratic obligations, it suggested, stating that: “the exercise by the Parliament of its budgetary powers in plenary sitting constitutes a fundamental event in the democratic life of the EU and must therefore be carried out with all the attention, rigour and commitment required of such a responsibility”.

The battle for a single seat

The holding of two plenary sessions in a week had been championed by MEPs who believe that the Parliament should have just one seat, in Brussels.

Ashley Fox, the Conservative MEP who lead efforts to change the calendar of meetings in Strasbourg, described the “bitterly disappointing” decision as “no more than a skirmish in our longer-term war to stop the ridiculous two-seat travelling circus altogether”.

Alexander Alvaro, a German Liberal MEP and co-founder of a campaign for a single Parliamentary seat, described the cost of maintaining two seats as “indefensible” and noted that “this week the French government is halving its three-year subsidy to Strasbourg’s European activities from €117 million to €47m”.

In October, MEPs voted by the biggest margin yet against the obligation to meet in Strasbourg as well as in Brussels. They called overwhelmingly – by 518 votes to 149 – for the EU’s member states “to start elaborating a roadmap with the Parliament towards a single seat and a more efficient use of the Parliament’s working places...to be presented in a report by 30 June 2013”.

Where the institutions have their seat is fixed in the European Union’s treaties and can only be changed by the member states. Up to now, change has seemed impossible because it would require the assent of France and Luxembourg.

The scale of MEPs’ support in October for a single seat was greeted as a breakthrough by those campaigning for the Parliament to be based in Brussels. France and Luxembourg were the only countries with a majority of their MEPs voting against the resolution. For the first time, a majority of the centre-right group, the European People’s Party, voted in favour.